


Come back stronger

by imsfire



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, I'm listing Cassian as a character but he's not actually around just a v influential figure, Kylo Ren is involved but not mentioned by name, hopefully that will make sense once you read it, mind-rape, this is set in the canon 'verse but with my headcanon of Cassian having been a well-known poet, trigger warning for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 08:57:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10273031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: "Poe, sweetheart, don’t let anyone define you with their mean labels.  Come back stronger next year.  That’s the way to handle defeat."





	

At seven, he comes second in a school contest for recitation.  He’d chosen his poem carefully; it’s beautiful, he thinks, but also sad, it makes him think of his parents’ faces when they speak of their lost home.  But first place goes to Brackan Dincho, despite – or maybe because of - her lisp.  He tries not to be furious with her; it isn’t her fault, exactly, that she’s so cute.  She’s golden-haired and rosy-cheeked and he’s just one more dark-eyed refugee kid.

“Not 'a refugee kid',” his mother says firmly, the one time he uses that term in front of her.  “A free kid.  Poe, sweetheart, don’t let anyone define you with their mean labels.”

She hugs her son and kisses the crown of his curly head.

“Find another poem and come back stronger next year.  That’s the way to handle defeat.”

At eight, he stands up in front of the school again, taller and more poised by far.  He recites “We will be better than we yet have been.”  Thinks, as he's speaking it, of all the times he’s waited for his mother or his father to come home; and on the last lines he’s blinking back tears.  There’s a silence in the auditorium that he can almost taste.  He wins, and knows it is solely because he is the best.  Brackan Dincho is still the cutest, though now she has both front teeth again she’s no longer got the lisp.  But he's come back stronger, and he is the best.

Poe decides he likes the feeling.

At ten he collects things, as ten year olds are wont to do.  Game cards, ring bolts, fossils, seedpods shaped like faces and dicks and U-wings and Wookie feet... and by eleven he’s graduated to collecting First Republic and Rebel Alliance memorabilia.  That’s how he comes to own the dog-eared recruitment poster.  It’s a rare piece and he’s slightly in awe of it.  This very sheet of flimsy was printed and gummed to a wall somewhere (on Cosugal, according to the provenance documents) to bring people to the rebels, to win the war.

The Heroes of Rogue One.

It’s a rare piece in large part because within a few days of the battle of Scarif, another greater victory had put another hero into the public eye, and his picture - handsome, smiling and radiant with possibility – and, crucially, still alive – had immediately superseded the crowded and rather grainy images of the Rogue One team.

Everybody loves Luke Skywalker.  But Poe Dameron loves the forgotten heroes as much, if not more.  He frames the old poster and hangs it on the wall of his bedroom, next to his recitation prize, a framed calligraphy copy of the poem he recited.

 

**We will be better than we yet have been (The Soldier’s Villanelle)**

**Cassian Andor**

We will be better than we yet have been,

Some sweetness can survive the rust and pain.

The full moon’s light urges me, pledge again

We will be better than we yet have been.

 

It is a challenge unlike all I’ve known

Facing my life and all my days have grown;

We will be better than we yet have been.

 

Doubt in my heart like bloody seed now sown,

I will hold faith though all my faith is torn;

Some sweetness can survive the rust and pain.

 

Cruellest of griefs, wrongs I have done and harm

That break hearts, minds, even this strong right arm;

We will be better than we yet have been.

 

I will keep faith with what I’ve sworn, again,

My service pledge by galaxies’ witness seen.

Some sweetness can survive the rust and pain;

We will be better than we yet have been.

 

Poe wants to be a pilot like his mother, wants to be a Pathfinder like his father; and a spy, and a poet, and a hero, like Cassian Andor.  He doesn’t exactly want to lay down his life for a cause; but he wants to be a man who would be willing to.

He wants to be the best.

At fifteen he recites the poem to his first girlfriend; at sixteen, to his first boyfriend.  How people react to it becomes one of his touchstones for character.  When someone is cynical about Andor’s verse, Poe knows not to trust them.  He’s polite, he’s civil, but he withholds his confidence from anyone who can’t hear the truth and the pain and the honour in those lines.

The poster and the framed calligraphy go with him everywhere; to high school, to flight school, to his first posting and to every home base thereafter.  On his data-pad one of the permanent folders is Andor’s “Last Data File”.  The day he finds a battered first edition flimsy-back in a street market on Borodo he pays fifteen credits for it without hesitation.  It’s worth three times that; Ispano Press only issued 600 of the paper edition, and it never went to a second impression.  The kind of people who buy their books in bound copies rather than data files tend to be rich and settled; not Alliance, certainly not forces families.

At thirty-eight he finds himself newly single and setting off on a dangerous solo mission.  Three days later he’s slumped in a torture chair, gasping, struggling for breath while monstrous casual hate forces its way into and through his mind.  He’s screaming and trying to fight, trying to hold it off; trying to save his mission, his knowledge, his sanity and self.  His thoughts are stripped, scrutinised, casually penetrated; and discarded, bleeding, one by one.

He’s left crying helplessly, struggling for breath, slipping in and out of consciousness.  He wasn’t strong enough to resist, and the mind-corroder took what he wanted.  Poe has no idea where in his broken self he’ll find the strength to survive this; what has been done to him and taken from him, what he’s been forced to give.  But there’s no other choice but live with it; though as he’s likely slated for execution it won’t have to be for very long.  He prefers to die with his head up and his eyes open.  He pulls together what shreds of self-respect he can find out of the corruption.  He breathes and grieves and remembers all the reasons why this assignment was worth the risk; and the act of breathing, the act of remembering, calms his aching heart.  There may be no hope left; but he will be the best he can at this one final task.  He will be strong enough to look death in the face with acceptance.

And that is when the Stormtrooper comes in and takes him out, and into the side passage, and pulls off his helmet.  Poe sees a lean black youth burning with hope and fear; hears an honest voice, and in it a courage brighter than a hundred suns.  It’s unbelievable.  A lifetime of hate and indoctrination, and this shining man suddenly standing up after all that, and saying “No” to it.  So young, and so bright, and so alive.  After all that evil, all his life, still to have nothing in him but good.  To be so much more than he has ever had the chance to be.

Some sweetness can survive the rust and pain, Poe thinks; and here is the living proof.

He follows Finn gladly, that day, and in everything that comes after, and they are better than they yet have been.  They come back stronger, every time.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a follow-up of a sort to my earlier "Poetry of the First and Second Republics, Vol 3; The War Poets (extract)". It was inspired by the numerous tumblr posts I've seen suggesting that Poe Dameron would have idolised Cassian Andor. Since in my headcanon (the canon one, that is, not one of the several fix-it ones!) Cassian was regarded by later generations as one of the leading poets of his time, this is what popped up...


End file.
